The Bucharest Major Preview

26 February 2018 15:56

There’s a lucrative $1,000,000 prize pool up for grabs at the upcoming Bucharest Major, along with 1500 DPC points awarded for the forthcoming The International 2018. Sixteen of the world’s best teams will descend on the Polyvalent Hall in Bucharest, Romania, all confident they will be the ones to reign supreme between Sunday 4th March and Sunday 11th March.

The Format

Ten of the sixteen Dota 2 teams have received direct invites to the Romanian capital, with the other six coming through regional qualifiers to secure their spots in Bucharest.

There’s a sixteen-team, best-of-one, swiss format group stage which will see the top eight teams advance to the single elimination best-of-three play-offs, leading onto the show-stopping, all-important best-of-five grand final.

The Teams

The sixteen teams competing in the Dota 2 major are shown below, along with their odds of winning the tournament outright, and those who succeeded from the qualification process:

Team Liquid – 15/4

Team Secret – 15/4

Virtus.pro – 15/4

Vici Gaming – 7/1

Newbee – 8/1

Evil Genuises – 10/1

VGJ.Thunder - China Qualifier - 12/1

OG – Europe Qualifier - 14/1

Mineski – 16/1

LGD.Forever Young – 33/1

Natus Vincere – 40/1

OpTic Gaming – North America Qualifier - 40/1

compLexity Gaming – 40/1

TNC Pro Team - South-East Asia Qualifier - 40/1

Vega Squadron – CIS Qualifier - 100/1

paIN Gaming – South America Qualifier - 150/1

Prize Pool

The $1,000,000 prize pool is split between only the top eight teams, whilst the 1,500 DPC points are shared between just the top four teams, even more reason for players and teams alike to produce the goods against their gaming counterparts:

1st place - $500,000 and 750 DPC Points

2nd place - $200,000 and 450 DPC Points

3rd-4th place - $90,000 and 150 DPC Points

5th-8th place - $30,000

Odds

At 5/4, a European region is odds-on favourite with many bookmakers to be crowned the tournament’s winner on home soil. The Chinese and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) regions are close behind at 7/4 and 5/1 respectively, with North America and South-East Asia further afield in the betting stakes at 10/1 and 14/1. The South American region are rank outsiders to go all the way at a distant 150/1, but paIN Gaming shouldn’t be entirely written off given they overcame seven other teams in their regional qualification group back in January.

Who Will Triumph?

The Bucharest Major follows on from previous Dota 2 majors including ESL One Katowice 2018, DreamLeague Season 8 and ESL One Hamburg 2017. It comes as no surprise that arguably the four pre-tournament favourites for The Bucharest Major are those sides who competed in those three grand finals – Virtus.pro, Team Secret, Team Liquid and Vici Gaming.

Virtus.Pro enthralled at both ESL One Katwoice and Hamburg, going all the way to take home a combined $900,000 and 1,500 DPC Points. Given they’re one of the current form teams on the circuit, it comes as no surprise that the Russian outfit go into this tournament as one of the favourites. Led by 27-year-old support player Alexei “Solo” Berezin, the CIS outfit quintet of Solo, RodjER, 9pasha, No[o]ne and RAMZES666 are one of the teams who possess the ability, talent and skillset in abundance to light up Polyvalent Hall.

Elsewhere, OG may not be up there as one of the frontrunners to go all the way to the grand final, but the European outfit will be buoyed by their recent qualification campaign, where they effectively saw off MansNotHat 2-0 in a rather one-sided final. This followed a group stage with a perfect 2-0 win record, not dropping a single game in the process against local rivals MansNotHot and PENTA Sports. They also enjoyed a relatively successful 2017, a calendar year which saw 1st place finishes at MDL Macau and The Kiev Major as well as a second-place finish at the Dota 2 Asia Championships.

Whilst a place in the play-offs looks unlikely on paper for the unfancied Brazilians paIN Gaming - who travel more in hope than expectation – the team of hFn, w33, tavo, Kingrd and Duster most recently saw off SG e-sports 2-0 in the WESG 2017 South America Finals, which should give them some reassurance that they can compete at this level against Team Secret, Liquid and co.

Dota fans and eSports fanatics alike will all be tuned in as the events unfold in Romania, be it live at the event or streaming online, to see who finishes top of the pile when the last button has been pressed in sheer delight or agonising desperation in the lucrative grand final.